Australian diabetes organisations are participating in the World Diabetes Day monument challenge, where over 600 buildings will light up across the world to raise awareness of diabetes and reflect the International Diabetes Federation theme: Diabetes education and prevention.

World Diabetes Day (WDD) is celebrated every year on 14th November. The World Diabetes Day campaign is led by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) and its member associations. WDD engages millions of people worldwide in diabetes advocacy and awareness. World Diabetes Day was created in 1991 by the International Diabetes Federation and the World Health Organization in response to growing concerns about the escalating health threat that diabetes now poses. WDD became an official United Nations Day in 2007 with the passage of United Nation Resolution 61/255. The campaign draws attention to issues of paramount importance to the diabetes world and keeps diabetes firmly in the public spotlight.

Women suffering from diabetes plus depression have a greater risk of dying, especially from heart disease, a new study suggests.In fact, women with both conditions have a twofold increased risk of death, researchers say. “People with both conditions are at very high risk of death,” said lead researcher Dr. Frank B. Hu, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Those are double whammies.” When people are afflicted by both diseases, these conditions can lead to a “vicious cycle,” Hu said. “People with diabetes are more likely to be depressed, because they are under long-term psychosocial stress, which is associated with diabetes complications.”

People with diabetes plus depression are less likely to take care of themselves and effectively manage their diabetes, he added. “That can lead to complications, which increase the risk of mortality.” Hu stressed that it is important to manage both the diabetes and the depression to lower the mortality risk. “It is possible that these two conditions not only influence each other biologically, but also behaviorally,” he said.

Type 2 diabetes plus depression are often related to unhealthy lifestyles, including smoking, poor diet and lack of exercise, according to the researchers. In addition, depression may trigger changes in the nervous system that adversely affect the heart, they said.

The report is published in the January issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Commenting on the study, Dr. Luigi Meneghini, an associate professor of clinical medicine and director of the Eleanor and Joseph Kosow Diabetes Treatment Center at the Diabetes Research Institute of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said the findings were not surprising.

“The study highlights that there is a clear increase in risk to your health and to your life when you have a combination of diabetes and depression,” he said. Meneghini noted there are many diabetics with undiagnosed depression. “I am willing to bet that there are quite a number of patients with diabetes and depression walking around without a clear diagnosis.” Patients and doctors need to be more aware that depression is an issue, Meneghini added.

For the study, Hu’s team collected data on 78,282 women who were aged 54 to 79 in 2000 and who were participants in the Nurses’ Health Study. Over six years of follow-up, 4,654 women died, including 979 who died of cardiovascular disease, the investigators found. Women who had diabetes had about a 35 percent increased risk of dying, and those with depression had about a 44 percent increased risk, compared with women with neither condition, the researchers calculated. Those with both conditions had about twice the risk of dying, the study authors found.

When Hu’s team looked only at deaths from heart disease, they found that women with diabetes had a 67 percent increased risk of dying and those with depression had a 37 percent increased risk of death. But women who had both diabetes and depression had a 2.7-fold increased risk of dying from heart disease, the researchers noted.

In the United States, some 15 million people suffer from depression and 23.5 million have diabetes, the researchers say. Up to one-fourth of people with diabetes also experience depression, which is nearly twice as many as among people who don’t have diabetes, they added. “The combination of diabetes and depression needs to be addressed,” Meneghini concluded. He added that patients need to tell their doctors if they are feeling depressed, and doctors also need to be on the lookout for signs of depression in their diabetic patients.

To test their hypothesis that environmental influences experienced by the father can be passed down to the next generation in the form of changed epigenetic information, Rando and colleagues fed different diets to two groups of male mice. The first group received a standard diet, while the second received a low-protein diet. To control for maternal influences, all females were fed the same, standard diet. Rando and colleagues observed that offspring of the mice fed the low-protein diet exhibited a marked increase in the genes responsible for lipid and cholesterol synthesis in comparison to offspring of the control group fed the standard diet.

These observations are consistent with epidemiological data from two well-known human studies suggesting that parental diet has an effect on the health of offspring. One of these studies, called the Överkalix Cohort Study, conducted among residents of an isolated community in the far northeast of Sweden, found that poor diet during the paternal grandfather’s adolescence increased the risk of diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease in second-generation offspring. However, because these studies are retrospective and involve dynamic populations, they are unable to completely account for all social and economic variables. “Our study begins to rule out the possibility that social and economic factors, or differences in the DNA sequence, may be contributing to what we’re seeing,” said Rando. “It strongly implicates epigenetic inheritance as a contributing factor to changes in gene function.”

The results also have implications for our understanding of evolutionary processes, says Hans A. Hofmann, PhD, associate professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-author of the study. “It has increasingly become clear in recent years that mothers can endow their offspring with information about the environment, for instance via early experience and maternal factors, and thus make them possibly better adapted to environmental change. Our results show that offspring can inherit such acquired characters even from a parent they have never directly interacted with, which provides a novel mechanism through which natural selection could act in the course of evolution.” Such a process was first proposed by the early evolutionist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, but then dismissed by 20th century biologists when genetic evidence seemed to provide a sufficient explanation.

Taken together, these studies suggest that a better understanding of the environment experienced by our parents, such as diet, may be a useful clinical tool for assessing disease risk for illnesses, such as diabetes or heart disease. “We often look at a patient’s behavior and their genes to assess risk,” said Rando. “If the patient smokes, they are going to be at an increased risk for cancer. If the family has a long history of heart disease, they might carry a gene that makes them more susceptible to heart disease. But we’re more than just our genes and our behavior. Knowing what environmental factors your parents experienced is also important.”

The next step for Rando and colleagues is to explore how and why this genetic reprogramming is being transmitted from generation to generation. “We don’t know why these genes are being reprogrammed or how, precisely, that information is being passed down to the next generation,” said Rando. “It’s consistent with the idea that when parents go hungry, it’s best for offspring to hoard calories, however, it’s not clear if these changes are advantageous in the context of a low-protein diet.”

Japanese women who eat three or more bowls of rice a day face a 50 percent greater risk of developing diabetes than those who eat one bowl, according to research by the National Cancer Center and other institutions. Although it has long been known that consuming large amounts of carbohydrates can increase the risk of developing the disease, the study was the first of its kind to explore the connection between eating rice and developing diabetes.

Conducted over five years from the early 1990s, the study covered about 60,000 people aged 45 to 74 in Iwate, Nagano, Ibaraki, Okinawa and four other prefectures. Of the subjects, 1,103–625 men and 478 women–developed diabetes during the study period.

Women who ate three bowls of rice a day were 1.48 times more likely to develop diabetes than those who ate one serving daily, the study found. Eating four or more bowls of rice a day raised the risk of women developing diabetes to 1.65 times that of women who ate only one bowl of rice a day. However, among women who performed physical labor or exercised vigorously for at least one hour a day, there was no significant difference in their risk of developing diabetes regardless of whether they habitually gorged on the grain.

For men, there was less evidence of a connection between rice intake and diabetes risk.

But regardless of gender, the less physical exercise a person did, the higher their risk of developing the disease.

While it is possible that eating a lot of rice can contribute to the onset of diabetes in some women, the study produced no conclusive evidence that overindulging is a direct cause of diabetes. Researchers at the National Center for Global Health and Medicine who analyzed the study’s results said it was important to monitor rice intake as part of maintaining a balanced diet.

A new study has claimed that an ingredient of dark chocolate could assist in the control of severely high cholesterol levels, a major problem for those suffering from diabetes. Previous research has highlighted that chocolate which contains a high level of cocoa solids rich in polyphenols may be able to reduce the risk of heart disease, and this study, published in the journal Diabetic Medicine, saw a reduction in cholesterol for a small number of diabetics given chocolate that contained a lot of the chemical.

The researchers, from Hull University, examined 12 patients with type 2 diabetes who were given identical chocolate bars, some of which were enriched with polyphenols. The patients that consumed the enriched bars experienced a small improvement in their overall cholesterol rating, with a drop in total cholesterol while the level of good cholesterol increased.

Steve Atkin, who led the study, said “Chocolate with a high cocoa content should be included in the diet of individuals with type 2 diabetes as part of a sensible, balanced approach to diet and lifestyle.” However, the charity Diabetes UK warned that these findings may mislead people into eating too much chocolate, arguing that the high fat and sugar content probably outweighed any benefits.

Dr Iain Frame, director of research at Diabetes UK, commented “On no account should people take away the message from this study, conducted in only 12 people, that eating even a small amount of dark chocolate is going to help reduce their cholesterol levels.” He added “It would, however, be interesting to see if further research could find a way of testing whether polyphenols could be added to foods which weren’t high in sugar and saturated fat such as chocolate”.

Here is another reason to make the tasty almonds a part of your daily diet. The humble tidbit nuts that combine tons of essential nutrients in one delicious package are an effective weapon in fighting type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, claims a new study. According to researchers, almonds added to the diet have a favorable effect on blood cholesterol levels and insulin sensitivity, two vital risk factors that can trigger diabetes and heart problems.

Lead author of the study, Dr. Michelle Wien, Assistant Research Professor in Nutrition at Loma Linda University’s School of Public Health stated, “We have made great strides in chronic disease research from evidence of effective treatment to evidence of effective prevention. “It is promising for those with risk factors for chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, that dietary changes may help to improve factors that play a potential role in the disease development.”

In a bid to assess the impact of almond enriched diet as a prescription for physical wellness, the researchers conducted a study. The focus of the study was to analyze the effect of the humble nut on the progression of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The investigators enrolled a group of 65 adults comprising 48 women and 17 men with pre-diabetes in their mid-50s. The study subjects were split into two groups. As a part of the study, one group was assigned to almonds while the second formed the control group. The control group followed a diet recommended by the American Diabetes Association (ADA).The group assigned to almonds conformed to a similar diet but also added 20 percent calories from almonds. All the participants were asked to consume the same amount of calories from carbohydrate-containing foods, such as pasta, bread, and rice. However, those consuming the almond-enriched diet reported a lower intake of carbohydrate-containing food items.

After a period of 16 weeks, the investigators compared the insulin and cholesterol levels of both the groups. It was noticed that people consuming almond-enriched diet exhibited marked improvement in their insulin sensitivity and a dramatic reduction in LDL cholesterol as opposed to those eating the nut-free regular diet.

The study was conducted at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. The findings of the research are published in the ‘Journal of the American College of Nutrition

Whole-fat dairy products containing high levels of a natural fatty acid might help lower the risk of type 2 diabetes, according to a recent research by U.S. scientists. A diet rich in milk, cheese, yogurt and butter contains trans-palmitoleic acid which is known to shield against insulin resistance and diabetes. “Our results demonstrate an inverse relationship between levels of trans-palmitoleate and metabolic risk factors and diabetes incidence,” Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, of the Harvard School of Public Health, and coauthors wrote in conclusion. “The small differences in trans-palmitoleate levels raise questions about whether this is the active compound or a marker for some other, unknown protective constituent of dairy or other ruminant foods.”

The studyThe study looked at 3,736 American seniors from Medicare eligibility lists aged 65 years or older. Physical tests, diagnostic testing, questionnaires on health status, and laboratory evaluation was conducted to evaluate the levels of 45 different fatty acids in the participants. They were further followed for 10 years with the help of annual clinic visits and interim telephone calls.

Study implicationsTrans-palmitoleate was responsible for an average of 0.18 percent of total fatty acid levels, with whole-fat dairy consumption accounting for the highest trans-palmitoleatele proportions. Participants who had consumed high levels of whole-fat dairy products revealed higher levels of trans-palmitoleate acid in their blood three years later, Dariush and his co-authors reported in the December issue of the journal ‘Annals of Internal Medicine.’ Further, participants with the highest levels of the acid circulating in their blood faced two-third the risk of suffering from type 2 diabetes as compared to the ones with the lowest levels. Such people also had lesser fat on their bodies, higher proportions of good cholesterol and lower levels of C-reactive protein.

“This is an extremely strong protective effect, stronger than other things we know can be beneficial against diabetes,” said Gökhan Hotamisligil, the study’s senior author and chair of the department of genetics and complex diseases at Harvard School of Public Health. “The next step is to move forward with an intervention trial to see if there is therapeutic value in people,” he added in a statement.

The research has been funded by the U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the National Institute of Health Office of Dietary Supplements and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Could the Mediterranean diet actually help prevent diabetes? The Mediterranean Diet, which is rich in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, healthy fats from nuts and olive oil, with moderate amounts of fish, low-fat dairy, and wine, and minimal red meat and processed meats, is considered to be an especially healthy eating plan.

Previous research conducted on newly diagnosed diabetic participants showed the diet did indeed help control the sugar spikes. The previous study found the mediterranean diet eating diabetics had better glycemic control. Furthermore, they had less needs for diabetes medications when adhering to the Mediterranean diet as opposed to a simple low-fat diet.

Recently, a team of researchers in Spain conducted a study using data from a large clinical trial to determine the effects of the Mediterranean Diet on preventing the onset of Type-2 diabetes. Participants were followed for an average of 4 years. Upon completion of the study, 54 participants had developed diabetes–but the split varied significantly among groups. The researchers found that the risk of developing diabetes was reduced by 52% among both groups of people who followed the Mediterranean Diet plans compared to the low-fat control group. In analyzing diet adherence, the researchers further noted that the closer an individual followed the Med-Diet plan, the lower their risk of developing diabetes. Interestingly, the weight of all participants did not change significantly throughout the study, nor did it vary significantly among the three groups.

The participants were divided in one of three groups: adherence to the Med-Diet with 1 liter per week of extra virgin olive oil, adherence to the Med-Diet with 1 oz per day of mixed nuts, or a standard low-fat diet as a control. No calorie restrictions were imposed on any of the groups. The two Med-Diet groups were instructed to increase fruit and vegetable intake, decrease meat intake, stay away from refined sweets and unhealthy fats such as butter, and consume red wine in moderation, if desired. The control group was given general instructions to lower overall fat intake. Baseline measurements and annual follow-up involved an oral glucose tolerance test and interviews to assess diet adherence.

Interestingly, the weight of all participants did not change significantly throughout the study, nor did it vary significantly among the three groups.

This study reinforces prior study results suggesting that the Mediterranean Diet – even without weight loss – may be protective against Type-2 diabetes. The researchers suggest that future studies should focus on the Med-Diet’s effects on younger people, and point out the possible benefits of the Mediterranean Diet as an effective intervention against complications of Type-2 diabetes.

A dietary supplement of the synthetic derivative of vitamin B1 has the potential to prevent heart disease caused by diabetes, according to new research from the University of Bristol, funded by Diabetes UK. Vitamin B1 may help the body to dispose of toxins and therefore protect cells of the heart from becoming damaged.

Diabetes leaves the heart more vulnerable to stress as less oxygen and nutrients are delivered to the heart and other organs. Heart damage can be caused by high levels of glucose entering cardiovascular cells, which forms toxins that accelerate the ageing of the cell. Around 50 per cent of people with diabetes die from cardiovascular disease, and this complication is the leading cause of death among people with diabetes. Researchers warn that with increasing prevalence of diabetes ( around one in twenty people in the UK are now diagnosed with the condition ), diabetes will result in a new epidemic of heart failure unless new treatments are developed.

A team of researchers at the University of Bristol gave a synthetic derivative of vitamin B1 called benfotiamine to mice with and without diabetes. They found that treating mice with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes with benfotiamine from the early stages of diabetes can delay progression to heart failure. They also found that the vitamin B1 derivative improved survival and healing after heart attacks in Type 1 mice ( and even in the mice without diabetes too ). Foods rich in vitamin B1 include Marmite, yeast and quorn, but it is not yet known whether changes to diet alone would provide enough of the vitamin to see the same effects as supplements achieved in mice.

Previous Diabetes UK-funded research at the University of Warwick was the first to show that people with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes have around 75 per cent lower levels of vitamin B1 than people without diabetes. It is thought that this may not be due to diet, but due to the rate at which the vitamin is cleared from the body. Small scale clinical trials of people with Type 2 diabetes have also discovered a link between taking vitamin B1 supplements and a reduction in the signs of kidney disease.

The latest research has been published in the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology. Professor Paolo Madeddu who led this research at the University of Bristol said “Supplementation with benfotiamine from early stages of diabetes improved the survival and healing of the hearts of diabetic mice that have had heart attacks, and helped prevent cardiovascular disease in mice with both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. We conclude that benfotiamine could be a novel treatment for people with diabetes, and the next step in this research will be testing whether similar effects are seen in humans.”

Dr Victoria King, Head of Research at Diabetes UK said “Diabetes UK is pleased to have supported this research and is encouraged by these promising results which now need to be tested and confirmed in human trials. We would like to note that it’s still too early to draw any firm conclusions about the role of vitamin B1 in the prevention of complications and we would not advise that people look to vitamin supplements to reduce their risk of cardiovascular complications at this stage. Taking your prescribed medication, eating a healthy balanced diet and taking regular physical activity are key to good diabetes management and therefore reducing your risk of diabetes associated complications.”